Noela Young

NOELA YOUNG
b. 1930

Noela is one of the most respected and admired illustrators in Australia. Over the near 50 years of her career she has quietly and unobtrusively featured in some of the best children's visual literature produced. The Muddle Headed Wombat series and her long and prolific involvement with The School Magazine have made her a part of so many children's growing up. Her wonderful facility with faces and their expressions in books like Toby, Grandpa and the Muddle Headed Wombat titles lets her convey so many subtleties and thoughts.

She was born in Sydney on March 13th 1930 and attended Sydney Girl's School and then the National Art School, graduating in 1951 with the College Medal for the Highest Honours in Illustration. Her first book work was for Enid Bell's David and his Australian Friends (1952) and she quickly established a reputation for portraying children and animals with sensitivity, affection and emotion.
She has worked with so many key authors in Australian children's and young adult literature: Hesba Brinsmead, Ruth Park, John Gunn, Christobel Mattingley, Patricia Wrightson, Lilith Norman, Emily Rodda, Robin Klein, Margaret Wild, and she has illustrated a wide range of genres - poetry, humour, early readers picture books, teenage novels and so on.
In her own words "I think that the most important thing for an illustrator to be is really interested in stories - to be able to get inside a story, to appreciate what an author is trying to express and at the same time to share this appreciation with the reader as well as contributing something of one's own."
This humble defining of herself as a bridge between the author and the reader belies the strength and voice that she is able to bring to a story through her carefully crafted work.
(Information drawn from Authors and Illustrators of Australian Children's Books by Walter McVitty 1989, and The Oxford Companion to Australian Children's Literature ed. Stella Lees and Pam MacIntyre 1993, as well as meeting the lovely lady in 1995)

Noela was the inaugural winner of the Pheme Tanner Award, presented at the 1995 La Trobe University Bendigo Children's Literature Conference, for her life of contribution to children's literature.

Austlit has a detailed biography and list of works, and you can search further in the database for reviews and analysis

For a broader list of the authors Noela has illustrated, have a browse through the Australian Authors and Illustrators page from the NSW branch of the Australian School Library Association.

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